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Above the Fold

Privacy and Security of Patient Records: The Lesson of the Weakest Link

Aug 16, 2010• 1

By DAID HARLOW

The Queen of Soul famously wailed about being a link in a chain of fools. Today’s lead story in the Boston Globe tells us about another sort of link in the chain — the weakest link in the chain of custody of patient records. In brief, a pathology billing service bought out by another service apparently dumped all records more that a year old in a town dump; a Globe photographer taking out his own trash noticed that the paper records (which he was looking at because he thought they ought to be recycled rather than dumped) had identifiable patient data and represented at least four hospitals from across Eastern Massachusetts. Clearly, these records ought to have been shredded or otherwise destroyed before disposal. Assuming they had some airtight contracts in place, the hospitals involved may well be looking to the seller of the billing service in this case to reimburse them for costs of:

identifying the patients involved in this data breach
notifying affected patients of the breach
providing credit monitoring services to affected patients
any damages incurred by patients
any fines incurred by the hospitals

Under the HITECH Act’s “Son of HIPAA” rules, the hospitals could be on the hook to the federales for up to $1.5 million in fines each as a result of this incident, and the state AG could get in on the action as well, filing suit on behalf of the affected Massachusetts residents and seeking to ensue that proper procedures are in place. There may also be a violation of the state data security law here as well. Massachusetts has a particularly stringent data security law on the books that took effect within the past year, and not all affected businesses have come into compliance. The AG may be on the prowl for a few high-profile cases, like this one, in which to levy substantial fines and convince the laggards that compliance would be more than worth their while.

The natural question to ask, given the facts of this case, is: What Would a Meaningful User Do?

Can Health 2.0 Fix Clinical Trials?

Aug 16, 2010• 6

By MATTHEW HOLT

Saturday’s New York Times portends more trouble for big Pharma. The headline is wrapped up in an examination of foreign corrupt practices, but the bigger issue is that clinical trials have hidden serious adverse events. The recent allegations that GSK hid data about heart attacks from an Avandia trial conducted abroad highlight the reality that over the last 20 years or so it’s been very hard to recruit patients for clinical trials in the US. It’s expensive to find patients, and the numbers of patients available near centers has not proved enough. The answer has been to go to places with lots of people and lower costs, like India.

One obvious consequence is that few of the significant advantages of Internet connectivity and patient community which have been developing in recent years have been adopted as part of these pre- or post market trials. Several online communities–notably PatientsLikeMe–have been running their own studies but they have typically been observational studies and haven’t had much acceptance from Pharma or regulators.

Ingenix buys Axolotl (with minor Update)

Aug 16, 2010• 4

By Matthew Holt

Ingenix, the arms dealer that’s been supplying all sides in the health care information war for the past decade or so, built itself up by buying lots of little companies in the data analytics space. Now it’s repeating the effort in the Health Information tools space. First it bought Caretracker (actually the company may have had a different name when it bought it, but that’s the name now). It’s a Web-based EMR for smaller practices (a sector with lots of Federal dollars attached). Then it bought Picis, a company that offers software that runs ORs, EDs and other high acuity inpatient sites (another recipient of lots of Medicare dollars).

Today it bought Axolotl, one of the vendors that’s biggest in the emerging (and constantly confusing) Health Information Exchange marketplace. Yet another place that lots of Federal dollars via ONC are going.

You’re probably noticing a pattern by now…

Ingenix itself of course is owned by United Health Group, although its CEO Andy Slavitt will be at pains to tell you that United also just happens to own a health insurer or two, and that Ingenix is not the subsidiary of a health insurer. Of course, Congress doesn’t always agree…

Normally I’d do lots of in-depth analysis about this story, but I’m for now just rushing to for once beat HIStalk to the punch!

UPDATE: Inga at HISTalk won’t truck with my “I beat her” comment and notes that she posted the following tweet before me (even if I got my post up on THCB before her or MrHISTalk posted on HISTalk!)

ngaHIStalk 1:09pm via Facebook

Rumor from two good sources: Ingenix/UnitedHealth Group will announce its acquisition of Axolotl after the market…http://fb.me/ECtaUXRc

boltyboy 2:56pm via TweetDeck

Ingenix (UHG) getting even more expansive in HIT, buys HIE vendor Axolotl

The Federal Reserve Wants to Rebuild Main Street

Aug 16, 2010• 9

By DAVID ERICKSON, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and JAMES S. MARKS, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

We all have a vision of the “Main Street” we would like to live near – tree-lined, friendly and safe. But our “Main Streets” are in disrepair. Across the country, they lack sidewalks, parks, well-stocked grocery stores with fresh food, healthy homes and apartments, and convenient public transportation. And it turns out, these things add up to a lot more than just an unpleasant place to live – they can have a major impact on our health.

There has been much in the news about the costs of medical care and our current and future economic competitiveness because of those costs. But little has been done as a nation to see if we can reduce the amount of disease we have to treat.

On Main Street in America, a woman with diabetes – perhaps one who is newly insured under health reform – will see her doctor, who after telling her what medications and tests she needs, will tell her to improve her diet and be more physically active. But what if she returns home, to a neighborhood that makes following the doctor’s advice nearly impossible because there is no supermarket with fresh food like in Detroit, where there are only 5 grocery stores for a city of 139 sq. miles?

That’s Dr. Geek Squad to you

Aug 16, 2010

By JANE SARASOHN-KAHN

Best Buy is teaming up with Cardiac Science, targeting potential purchasers of electronic health records (EHRs) and noninvasive cardiac devices. The venture
looks to take advantage of economic stimulus funding available through
the HITECH Act aimed at motivating physicians to adopt EHRs.

Cardiac Science is a medical device company focused on the
noninvasive management of heart disease. Their products include
defibrillators, ECG/EKG devices, stress testing equipment, Holter and
vital sign monitors. These heart-hardware products are designed to
connect with electronic health records systems in hospitals and
physician offices. and are used in many settings outside of health
institutions including schools, emergency medical response centers, fire
and law enforcement, airports, and the hospital industry.

Interview with Mary Hiller, MedExpert International

Aug 16, 2010

By Matthew Holt

Mary Hiller is Executive Director at MedExpert International — one of the companies behind Safeway’s remarkable results in reducing health care costs. The company manages a system that aligns best practices from intensive literature searches (although Mary is a little quiet about how they do that) with patient’s decision at the moment of diagnosis. The company is coming out of a relatively stealthy period, and when they contacted THCB I thought it would be a good opportunity to find out more. Plus Mary’s role in the Bond movie Diamonds are Forever makes her a little unique among health IT executives! Here’s the interview:

Mary Hiller, MedExpert International

Atul Gawande and the Art of Medical Writing

Aug 15, 2010• 13

By BOB WACHTER, MD

Don’t read this.

That is, if you have a limited amount of time for reading today, I’d rather you read Atul Gawande’s essay on end-of-life care in this month’s New Yorker than this blog.

But if you can spare a little time, I’ll be focusing on some of the techniques Gawande uses to make his writing so lyrical and memorable. Whether you write yourself or limit your storytelling to cocktail parties and presenting H&P’s on morning rounds, lessons abound. Here are a few, gleaned from this month’s piece, “Letting Go: What Should Medicine Do When It Can’t Save Your Life?”:Continue reading…

Will Comparative Effectiveness Research Really Make a Difference If the Public Doesn’t Want It?

Aug 13, 2010• 8

By KENT BOTTLES, MD

Not long ago I was lucky to be invited to a New England Healthcare Institute discussion entitled “From Evidence to Practice: Making Comparative Effectiveness Research Findings Work for Providers and Patients “ in Washington, DC.

How to disseminate and implement Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) so that patient care is really improved was the first topic tackled by the expert panel and the moderator, Clifford Goodman of The Lewin Group.

The target audiences for CER findings include: patients, disabled patients, providers, policy makers, health plans, medical device companies, pharmaceutical companies, hospital administrators, academic researchers, community physicians, professional societies, and regulators.

Michael McGinnis, MD, of the Institute of Medicine, offered clusters as a way to organize these different targets: Cluster 1 (patients, providers, policy makers), Cluster 2 (control levers like payers, purchasers, system managers, professional societies, regulators) and Cluster 3 (researchers and those concerned with methodology).

Seth Frazier, Vice President of Transformation at Geisinger, was the first of many to point out the gap between the academic literature of CER and what patients and providers need at the point of care. He noted that providers need actionable recommendations that can be integrated into the flow of the clinic and hospital and that much of the evidence-based medicine product is not usable in this practical way. This observation reminded me of the gap between the public and the health care experts that Drew Altman of the Kaiser Family Foundation documented so effectively and the Kristen Carmen Health Affairs survey that said patients regard evidence-based medicine as a barrier to what they want.

Imperfect Timing, Interesting Findings

Aug 13, 2010• 4

By ROGER COLLIER

I’ve been reading a recent paper from the Committee for Economic Development, one of the less doctrinaire business research groups, that should give health care reform advocates (and opponents) food for thought.

“ Health Care in California and National Health Reform,” authored by health care economist Alain Enthoven and CED’s Joseph Minarik, was apparently written during the course of the lengthy debate on reform, with updates inserted after passage of PPACA. With an emphasis on CED’s own earlier proposals for reform rather than the new law, the timing of the paper’s publication was obviously less than perfect, but, even so, the findings are well worth examining.

The paper’s scope is limited to California, clearly not a typical state, given its considerable HMO enrollment and relatively low per capita health care spending, but one with the largest non-federal employer insurance exchange (CalPERS, the state employee benefit system), and the largest delivery system HMO (Kaiser), both of which have made great efforts to make health care more cost-effective. The paper includes reports of interviews with CalPERS administrators and employee benefits managers of major academic and business employers offering a range of health care coverage options to their employees, including a number who have adopted a managed competition model with fixed dollar employer contributions and choice of coverage from among a limited number of competing options.

There’s both good and bad news for health care reformers.Continue reading…

No One Is Perfect, Not Even Computers

Aug 12, 2010• 17

By HERBERT MATHEWSON

My last post described how a precisely regimented dosage of intravenous medication delivered to me over six hours by a state-of-the art computer actually depended on the existence (and the survival for 6 hours) of a handwritten yellow Stickie hanging on my IV pole. I write this post as a recipient, certainly not a victim, since no harm occurred, of a “care error” caused by a computer.

After my first infusion I grumbled to my physician that it had taken 6 hours, and that the package stuffer the nurse gave me recommended about a 2 hour infusion for someone my weight and age. He was surprised but responded, “Those nurses are really good. They probably have more information about the drug. I would go with what they say.” So I called the Head Nurse in the Infusion Center. She told me that the infusion rates come from the computer. “How does the computer know them?”, I asked. She responded, “The Hospital Pharmacy Committee puts them in.” I called the Chief Pharmacist, noted the difference between the package insert and the computer recommendations, and asked him to review the information because I would sure like to spend just 2 hours off my boat rather than 6 for the next treatment. He contacted me a couple of days later to tell me that that medication infusion rate had been entered into the computer several years ago and was based on data from the one manufacturer of the medication. “There are now three manufacturers and two different concentrations. Each one has different infusion rates. Yours could go in over 2 hours. I will take care of updating the computer’s recommendations for your medication before the next treatment.”